Notices by Chris (brainblasted@social.libre.fi), page 15

Would you support a fundraiser to implement encryption support into the @gnome Geary mail client?

and i don't just say this out of "oh people who don't use the command line are ~~scrubs~~ who don't understand how ~~real~~ computers work"

people have been systematically denied access to the knowledge that would let them use the expensive and miraculous computing devices they have to the fullest extent possible

this is a /choice/ that software developers continue to make and we have to /stop/

management will not approve and frankly they can fuck off. budget time for an /actual manual/

and people talk a lot of shit about how "open source software isn't user friendly" and like... there _are_ real problems with the way people (don't) talk about UX in foss projects

but "the interface is not instantly familiar to me" is not that problem because that's not a goal you can ever reach for more than a tiny tiny group of people

see, e.g., the simple lack of a back button in iOS / reliance on implicit "back" actions in Android flummoxing users switching/using other peoples' phones

i understand that people don't like it when people defend software like screen or vim or emacs or excel or whatever but like

there are two paradigms of teaching users how to use software

one is to make a self-consistent interface and document it extremely thoroughly and surface that documentation to the user immediately

the other is to just drop them on the beach with a few signposts and abandon them to fuck around

the problem is that the second way is really common and totally fucks users over

@lightdark I think I understand the gist :)

@lightdark I like to figure out what people prefer just so I don’t make folks uncomfortable/

@violet I need to rework the tasks to be more granular

@violet I’m absolutely open to it :) The repo is here if you want to check it out: https://gitlab.gnome.org/BrainBlasted/Social

@violet same here. For now I’m starting with building a desktop app for Masto/Pleroma, then I’ll see what I can build from there.

@ctrlaltdog Wow, what a deal